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Irish Examiner
10-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Examiner
Clodagh Finn: How a true pioneer emerged from the shadows
It is difficult to understand how Oonah Keogh faded from the collective memory when her entry into the Dublin Stock Exchange a century ago (outlined here last week) made such a sensation all around the world. Her return to the public consciousness was much quieter, and relatively recent, but it happened with the kind of serendipity that gives you goosebumps. It was as if the woman herself wanted to be rediscovered — and reclaimed. Although that was not how it seemed at first. When her singular achievement re-emerged in scraps from the archives of the Irish Stock Exchange around 2008, then-CEO Deirdre Somers tried to find out more, but she and her colleagues hit a wall. They were just planning to enlist the public's help when, unannounced and by sheer coincidence, Oonah Keogh's son walked into The Exchange Buildings, off Dame St, in the centre of Dublin. 'I couldn't believe it,' Somers tells Irishwoman's Diary. 'On a Friday we decided to draft a letter to the newspapers. The following Wednesday, I came out of a meeting and was told that Oonah's son, Bayan Giltsoff jnr, had walked in and that he was being held 'under house arrest' in one of the meeting rooms because they knew I would really want to meet him.' HISTORY HUB If you are interested in this article then no doubt you will enjoy exploring the various history collections and content in our history hub. Check it out HERE and happy reading Oonah's youngest son couldn't believe it either. His wife told him that morning he wouldn't make it past the front door, but his arrival was treated like a godsend. And it was, because the scrapbook of cuttings he brought with him opened a window on the life of an extraordinary woman who challenged so many norms in her lifetime. Global history As a young woman, she travelled around Europe and North Africa (albeit accompanied by a governess), she studied art, she made global history by becoming the first woman on the Dublin Stock Exchange, and she fell in love with a Russian artist/designer who came to her door selling chickens. When she married him in 1933, she resigned from the stock exchange, as expected, and walked down the aisle in 'a gown of ivory satin with long train falling from the waist and golden girdle', according to the wedding notice in the Irish Independent. She moved to Somerset in England and transferred her stockbroking skills to her husband's business, restoring Tudor houses. She even rolled up her own sleeves to help with the physical building work but her focus was more on the books. It must have seemed easy after the unimaginable pressures of managing 'fantastically large sums' that had left her weeping at her desk at the Dublin Stock Exchange, as she once put it. During those years, she had much to negotiate; a falling-out with her authoritarian and later very ill father, the heavy losses suffered by the family business, Joseph Keogh & Co, during the Wall Street crash of 1929, as well as her automatic exclusion from the gentlemen's clubs, the bars and the golf clubs where deals and contacts were made. She put all that behind her and settled into life in England, and into her new role as a mother. In 1935, Oonah and Bayan's first child Tatiana was born. A son, Rurik, followed in 1937 and, another, Nicholi, in 1939. Court battles Oonah Keogh, now Giltsoff, made headlines again in 1943 when she took the Hibernian Bank to court in a row over shares. When she lost, she appealed. She lost again. It was huge financial blow, writes historian Dr Bláthnaid Nolan in a fascinating 32-page booklet published by the Irish Stock Exchange entitled Oonah Keogh, A Celebration. 'The fact that Oonah appealed the case shows a certain level of tenacity, although it could also have been a last bid effort to allay the astronomical debt that she was now responsible for paying back,' writes Dr Nolan. In 1947, the Giltsoffs sold up and moved back to Ireland. A fourth child, Bayan jnr, the keeper of his mother's archive, was born in 1945. They started again and gained new recognition in Kilquade, Co Wicklow, where Bayan Giltsoff designed what became known as the Old Russian Village, a development of about 20 houses, with exposed beams and lead-paned windows reminiscent of a Russian dacha. (Former president Cearbhaill Ó Dáiligh lived in one). In the late 1950s, Oonah Giltsoff, a Catholic, again upended expectations when she separated from her husband and later moved to Spain with two of her children where she earned a living teaching English. She added fluent Spanish to the fluent French she had mastered as a younger woman. She was in her sixties by then, but as this quote from a few years before illustrates, age had not dimmed her: I would have [stayed on at the stock exchange] if I had realised I would feel so young at 53 instead of thinking (as we did then) that one would be starting to wear a lace cap And Oonah, or Úna as she later spelled her name, would certainly be the kind of person to wear the appropriate headwear. She was an elegant woman who dressed in silk blouses, silk neckerchiefs and skirt suits. She did not approve of women wearing trousers and believed they should wear make-up. Her life and work was, as the booklet describing both points out, the very embodiment of feminism yet she vehemently denied being a feminist. She hated the word, she said in an interview in 1971. She hated the words 'unisex' and 'equality' too. Women and men should be 'complementary', she said. And yet, her granddaughter Katushka Giltsoff, a woman who has worked in international finance herself, thinks Oonah would be disappointed at the lack of progress a century on. Yet, she might be pleasantly surprised to see that women now make up 57% of the staff at Euronext Dublin. The meeting room at Euronext Dublin named after Oonah Keogh. Picture: courtesy of Euronext Dublin She is celebrated there too. Daryl Byrne, CEO of Euronext, says: 'She is an important part of our history and we talk about her journey and achievements a lot. One of our meeting rooms is named after her.' A role model Her legacy, though, needs to be more widely recognised, says her granddaughter, not least because she is an important role model: 'She was a confident, determined woman and I worry that plenty of young professional women lack these traits.' We might leave the last word to her late son, Bayan jnr, who took a chance more than a decade ago and rocked up to his mother's former work place. 'Despite her extraordinary upbringing, there was a huge amount of personal sadness in her life; losing five siblings before her early 30s, she always saw the positive in life and was always ready with her good humour and practical attitude towards life in general and to fight on against all the odds. Believe me, at times, these were stacked against her. [She lost her daughter Tatiana too, who died in July 1989. Oonah died eight days later, aged 86. "She just lost her spirit," according to her granddaughter who was with her just before]. 'She tried to instil in us all (her children) to always look life right in the eye and amongst many gems of wisdom [was], 'Life takes you at your own valuation', which is very true indeed; a maxim which has taken me through life quite well. She offered and bestowed upon her children great love, some criticism, great advice (not frequently listened to), great wisdom and memories.'
Irish Examiner
02-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Examiner
Clodagh Finn: Marking the centenary of our first female stockbroker
Exactly 100 years ago tomorrow, 22-year-old Oonah Keogh's application to the Dublin Stock Exchange was accepted after a fevered, three-week debate. Little wonder she reported feeling 'sick with fright' when she walked onto the market floor three weeks later, becoming the first female stockbroker in Ireland and in many parts of the world. It was 1973 before London Stock Exchange admitted its first woman. Oonah Keogh was admitted into the Dublin Stock Exchange 100 years ago, an event that made world headlines. The London Stock Exchange didn't admit a woman until 1973. Photo courtesy of her granddaughter Katushka Giltsoff Her entry into the all-male 'sacred precinct' was met with consternation, sensation – and hostility. It was reported that some brokers had even vowed to ignore her but, on her momentous first day, May 28, 1925, she was courteously introduced to every member and treated with the utmost respect. It was a respect that endured and deepened as she proved her innate ability to do the job. HISTORY HUB If you are interested in this article then no doubt you will enjoy exploring the various history collections and content in our history hub. Check it out HERE and happy reading Yet, it must have been daunting. Daryl Byrne, CEO of Euronext Dublin (formerly the Irish Stock Exchange) is making that point as he shows Irishwoman's Diary around the original exchange building on Anglesea Street in Dublin city centre. 'It's a big room with high ceilings and at that time there would only have been men on the floor. It really highlights her bravery, determination, vision and strength of character. She decided what she wanted and had the courage to go for it and achieve it, and she paved the way for others.' The woman herself gave a sense of what it was like to trade in 'the Room', as it was known, a lavishly decorated space with ornate pillars, wood panelling and Waterford Crystal chandeliers. In an interview in 1956, she described how brokers sat in two concentric circles – a chair for each firm – and traded from their seats. If one wished to sell or buy something, they would call out and an interested broker would reply. Then, they would 'look at each other like two cats ready to spring', she recalled. At first, she stood behind her father, long-time member Joseph Keogh, 'keeping the book', or accounting ledger, but when he took ill she took the chair alone for five months. Support for Oonah Here's a fascinating peephole into how that went, courtesy of a London Times article 'First on the Floor' published in September 1956: 'It was exacting work, with telephones ringing constantly and each call liable to turn the market from a buying to a selling market or the reverse. 'In the constant daily battle of wits it was necessary to be 'very smug and poker-like'… [and] when [Oonah's] girlish voice would not carry across the ring of chairs, brokers on either side would shout up gallantly for her.' If that sounds patronising, the article went on to say in no uncertain terms that Oonah Keogh played a blinder in her father's absence. Indeed, business went so well that clients had no idea he had been away. It is striking, at this remove, to see how quickly brokers and clients accepted – and even admired – the first woman to work among them. She also had the public's enthusiastic support when she first applied for membership. 'The public of Dublin are warmly championing Miss Keogh's cause,' trumpeted the Evening News in 1925 in an article that ran under the headline 'Miss Stockbroker. Dublin Excited Over a Girl's Application.' 'They feel that the city, which claims the first woman MP [Constance Markievicz] and first woman barrister [in fact there were two: Averil Deverell, Wicklow, and Frances Kyle, Belfast, were called to the Bar in Dublin in 1921] would be lacking if it showed a reactionary tendency among its stockbrokers.' The same public – embodied in the pen of an unnamed journalist – even made a robust case for Oonah, arguing that there was nothing in the rules preventing a woman being admitted to the stock exchange. The people of Dublin went further by 'declaring', no less, that Miss Keogh [was] entitled to succeed under Article 3 of the Constitution, which ensured equality of opportunity to every citizen over the age of 21. You can't help wondering what happened to the voice of that aspirational, pro-women public in the decades that followed. 'Technically eligible' Though, it wasn't always heard then either. The Dublin Stock Exchange was far from pro-woman in the 1920s. It admitted Oonah Keogh only because she was 'deemed technically eligible' and it had no other alternative. The 1922 Constitution, so closely aligned with the ideals of equality expressed in the 1916 Proclamation of Independence, played a role too. And, of course, Oonah herself had the right credentials. She might have been 'brought up in a glass case and wrapped in cotton wool as well', as she once put it, but she had also been 'soused in stocks and shares' since childhood. She had the private education, the connections and the financial wherewithal too. She could afford the £500 application fee and had references from the right kind of people, including the then agriculture minister Patrick Hogan. What stands out now, however, is how quickly she was accepted into a world that would remain male dominated for decades to come. 'The casualness of that acceptance makes it all the more interesting,' says Deirdre Somers, former CEO of the Irish Stock Exchange. Her entry to the exchange forced a change in the rulebook – all references to 'he' and 'him' now had to include 'she' and 'her – and her assimilation into the cut and thrust of this rarefied world was quick, and complete. Oonah Keogh in the mid-70s. Picture: courtesy of Katushka Giltsoff That is clear from the archives that Deirdre Somers and James Ferguson discovered in the basement of the stock exchange one rainy August afternoon at the height of the financial crisis in 2008. Her welcome into the fold wasn't so much borne of altruism but of necessity; the stock exchange operated on its collective reputation so it made sense to ensure that every member did well. And yet, when Deirdre Somers started to do more research, she discovered a great deal of admiration for Oonah Keogh, a woman working at a time when, for a brief period before the 1937 Constitution confined women to the home, there was a burgeoning renaissance among professional women. In 1927, for example, Ivy Hutton opened an all-female painting and decorating business called the Modern Decorator on South Anne Street, a stone's throw from the stock exchange. A little further up the road, Muriel Gahan, tireless promoter of co-operation and traditional crafts, opened The Country Shop on Stephen's Green in 1930. There were many other women working as female directors and company secretaries at the time, too. For example, a list of applications for trade loans tells us that Mairéad Ní Dhálaigh, of Limerick Shoes Ltd, applied for a trade loan to acquire a building and erect a shoe and slipper factory in 1935. (That tiny snippet is gleaned from Dr Therese Moylan's fascinating thesis on women entrepreneurs and self-employed business owners in Ireland 1922-1972, a subject for another day). Oonah Keogh, however, was proving somewhat elusive, and her story had slipped further into the folds of history because her name was spelled in so many different ways. The team at the Irish Stock Exchange was on the verge of writing to the newspapers to enlist the public's help when something extraordinary happened that would bring the incredible life of Oonah Keogh back into the limelight. Next week: How a true pioneer emerged from the shadows
